Duchesses pointed her out to one another with a passing
look--rich shopkeepers' wives copied the fashion of her hats. Sometimes
her landau, in its haste to get by, stopped a file of puissant turnouts,
wherein sat plutocrats able to buy up all Europe or Cabinet ministers
with plump fingers tight-pressed to the throat of France. She belonged
to this Bois society, occupied a prominent place in it, was known in
every capital and asked about by every foreigner. The splendors of this
crowd were enhanced by the madness of her profligacy as though it were
the very crown, the darling passion, of the nation. Then there were
unions of a night, continual passages of desire, which she lost count
of the morning after, and these sent her touring through the grand
restaurants and on fine days, as often as not, to "Madrid." The staffs
of all the embassies visited her, and she, Lucy Stewart, Caroline Hequet
and Maria Blond would dine in the society of gentlemen who murdered the
French language and paid to be amused, engaging them by the evening with
orders to be funny and yet proving so blase and so worn out that they
never even touched them. This the ladies called "going on a spree," and
they would return home happy at having been despised and would finish
the night in the arms of the lovers of their choice.
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